at Canton were scarcely less surprised at the suddenness of the revolution than the Chinese themselves were. The maxim of Bacon, that nature should be imitated by politicians in the gradual character of her changes, seems to have been forgotten or disregarded; and before the arrangements consequent on so complete a transmutation could be well completed, the chief commissioner arrived on board the Andromache frigate, in the person of Lord Napier, an amiable nobleman and zealous public servant, who deserved a more propitious errand and a better fate.

The rumours of judicial and fiscal powers to be exercised under the new commission were calculated to excite the alarm of the jealous and watchful government of the country, whose attention had only just before been drawn to the attempts of English traders on the coast to force a trade by intimidation. No previous communication whatever with the Canton authorities prepared them for the appointment of Lord Napier; indeed there was no time for it; and his instructions were "Your Lordship will announce your arrival at Canton by letter to the Viceroy."2 The chief commissioner was received at Macao on the 15th July, 1834, in the manner due to his rank and personal character, by the president of the committee, to whom Lord Napier produced the commission and instructions under the royal sign-manual, appointing him colleague and eventual successor to himself. Mr. Davis's intention to quit China that year had long been settled and declared, but the actual insertion of his name in the commission, and a letter from the minister who had drawn up the new Bill, made him consider it his duty to accept office while upon the spot; and this was declared

1 The writer of this stated his regret at the omission, in a letter to the Secretary of State, in these terms: "If I may be allowed to express my own sentiments, I cannot help thinking that a letter with a few presents from the king to the Chinese emperor, transmitted, without any embassy, through the Viceroy of Canton, as in 1795, (and I believe once again afterwards,) would have been a good mode of announcing so important a change. seems to me that the native government had some right to it, and that it was an eligible and inexpensive way of dispelling or allaying their accustomed suspicions."

2 Parliamentary Papers, p. 4.

It

53

in an official letter, on the express condition that he should be at liberty to proceed home that same year. Sir George Robinson undertook the provisional office of third superintendent until his majesty's pleasure could be known.

On the 23rd July the commission embarked on board H. M. ship Andromache, and proceeded to the anchorage at Chuenpee, below the batteries at the Boca Tigris. At noon on the following day the superintendents left his Majesty s ship, and proceeded on board the cutter on their way to Canton, where they arrived at 2 o'clock on the morning of the 25th.

Lord Napier addressed a letter from himself to the Viceroy, announcing his arrival according to his instructions; and when this had been translated by Dr. Morrison, the Chinese secretary to the commission, it was despatched to the usual place of delivery, near one of the city gates. Under a variety of pretexts, grounded principally on the wording of the address, the mandarins at the station declined to receive the letter, the real object of the government being to oblige Lord Napier to quit Canton until the Emperor's permission for his residence had been obtained. This indeed appears to be an act of sovereignty of which all states are naturally exceedingly tenacious; and the document by which this sanction is communicated is called in Europe an exequatur, the issue of which must precede the exercise of any official functions. Though China has never yet been formally recognised by any European state as participating in the rights and obligations of international law, a knowledge of the general principle was shown in those papers from the Chinese government, which declared that Lord Napier's mission should have been announced from England, and the sanction of the Peking court obtained.

It was his Lordship's misfortune to be placed from the very first in an impossible position, as regarded the full and immediate exercise of the functions confided to him; but his declining to correspond with the Hong merchants, and his views as to the policy and practicability of a direct communication with the mandarins, have been fully justified by later events, since Captain

Elliot long ago obtained that concession as a mere matter of necessity. What had been for centuries practised by the Chinese authorities, in their relations with the Portuguese governor of Macao, might and ought to be yielded to the British functionary, who, not being a merchant, could, in perfect conformity with the Chinese usage, decline receiving any communication through the unsuitable channel of the Hong merchants, until the mandarins found it convenient to address themselves to him. In fact the Viceroy had, only two years before, received, in the most public manner, a despatch from Lord William Bentinck, transmitted by the Challenger frigate, and superscribed of course as a letter, and not a petition. The Hong merchants, acting as the compulsory agents of the local government, and finding that Lord Napier would have nothing to say to them, soon fell upon the old expedient of threatening the stoppage of the trade; endeavouring by that argumentum ad crumenam to create a division among the English, and set up a party opposed to the measures of his Lordship. They unhappily succeeded at length in dividing a community which had long contained within itself the germs of dissension; but Lord Napier took the earliest steps to prevent it, if possible. In his despatch to the Foreign Office of the 14th August, he wrote, with reference to a requisition from the Hong merchants to the English merchants, calling upon them to attend a meeting of the Hong at the Contoo House, "This appearing to me rather a novel and unprecedented measure, I immediately called a general meeting of all British inhabitants, to be held at the hall of the superintendents at half-past ten, in order to deliberate on the propriety and the consequences of attending such a meeting. Mr. Davis and myself addressed the meeting, deprecating such an -attendance as that proposed; and a draft of the letter to the Hong merchants (declining their proposal), being proposed and read, was carried unanimously, with some verbal alter

ations."

In the midst of these difficulties and discussions it naturally occurred to the second

1 Blue Book, p. 11.

superintendent that now was the proper time to present a respectful address to the Emperor by the way of the Yellow Sea, waiting the results of which, the commission might suspend its functions and retire for a time within itself. Lord Napier alludes to this in his despatch of the 14th August in these words:" Mr. Davis has perhaps offered some observations on this head, as he has already done to me, in reference to the advantage of immediate communication." Such observations were in fact contained in the letter to the Secretary of State, already quoted at p. 53 (note), but omitted in the extract from the Foreign Office.2-"The next best thing" (to an announcement from England) "might have been a discretionary power vested in Lord Napier, in the event of the provincial authorities being found hostile or impracticable, (things quite within the range of possibility,) to send up a respectful address to the Emperor by the way of the Yellow Sea, announcing the change, and praying for just and liberal treatment from the Canton government. Lord Napier tells me his hands are quite tied up on the point, and that he must not communicate with Peking, except by a previous reference home. I could have wished that, at so great a distance as 15,000 miles, a larger latitude of discretion had been allowed, presupposing a well-founded confidence in those who were to exercise it." There can be little doubt that, if the proposed reference could have been made, and the functions of the commission suspended ad interim, the unfortunate occurrences which followed might have been prevented.

Towards the end of August, after the Viceroy had refused Lord Napier's letter of announcement, and declined every subsequent offer of direct communication, the departure of a ship for England presented the first opportunity that had occurred since Lord Napier's arrival for sending despatches to the Foreign Office. As the ship, after quitting the river and remaining some days at Lintin, was also to touch at Macao on her way out, circumstances connected with the forwarding of the latest intelligence led his Lordship to request the second commissioner to proceed to the

2 Parliamentary Papers, p. 25.

latter place and await the vessel's departure. That being accomplished, Mr. Davis wrote to beg that H. M. cutter might be sent down for him as soon as possible. The services of that vessel in communication with the two frigates prevented her arrival until the night of the 5th September, when she brought a letter from Lord Napier explaining the delay. Very early on the following morning the second commissioner started in the cutter with Captain Elliot, and, on the way up, a few lines were received from Sir George Robinson, saying that he had come down to the frigates with a requisition from Lord Napier to Captain Blackwood (now Lord Dufferin), to move the Imogene and Andromache to the anchorage of the merchant-ships at Whampoa. A note from Captain Blackwood stated that he would look out for the cutter until seven o'clock the next morning, when the frigates would weigh anchor to pass the batteries. We accordingly pressed the cutter on under all sail, and, the wind being fair, fortunately got on board the Imogene at midnight.

It appeared that the Chinese, not contented with their earlier acts of annoyance and indignity-whether of a personal nature, as the unnecessary breaking open of Lord Napier's baggage when the keys were at hand, and the seizure of the purveyors of provisions; or the more serious and public injury inflicted by the stoppage of the trade-had been emboldened to proceed so far as to beset his Lordship's residence with soldiers, to drive away his native servants, and to cut off the supply of provisions. Under these circumstances, accompanied by the denial to sanction or make good any transactions involving British property subsequent to the 16th August, the Right Honourable the Chief superintendent deemed it necessary, on the 5th September, to send for a guard of marines, and to request the senior officer of H. M. ships to proceed with the Imogene and Andromache to the anchorage of the trade at Whampoa.

Early on the morning of the 7th September we passed the batteries at the Boca Tigris, in working up against a northerly wind; but, under every disadvantage, silenced the fire which was opened on us, with only one man hurt by a splinter, and a few ropes shot away.

55

The wind then failed, and the ships came to an anchor against the ebb-tide below Tiger Island fort. Here they lay in a dead calm until the 9th, when a breeze sprung up, and we weighed to pass Tiger Island. The battery opened its best fire on the frigates; but we passed within pistol snot, knocking the stones about the ears of the garrison, though with the loss of a man killed in each ship, and a few wounded. Baffling calms again retarded the progress of the frigates, which did not reach Whampoa anchorage until late on the 11th September.

On the arrival of H. M. ships among the merchantmen at Whampoa, the communication between that place and Canton was found to be entirely closed for all purposes of commerce or otherwise; and to the Americans as well as to the English. A negotiation then commenced, in which the local government required the withdrawal of the frigates from the anchorage of the merchantmen, and the retirement of Lord Napier from Canton, previous to the resumption of commercial business. His Lordship was therefore induced, on the 15th September, to address a letter to the British community, in which he informed them that, having thus far without effect used every effort to establish the commission at Canton, he did not feel authorised at present, by a continued maintenance of his claims, to occasion the further interruption of the trade of the port. It was therefore arranged that the frigates should proceed to Lintin; and Lord Napier, whose health was in a very precarious state, embarked in a chopboat for Macao on the 21st September. On the morning of the 26th his Lordship reached that place by the inner passage, his illness having been aggravated by the heat of the weather, and by the delay and annoyances experienced on the passage down.

The Viceroy proved for once as good as his word in re-opening the channel of commercial business as soon as the chief commissioner retired from Canton; and the traders were soon fully engaged in loading their ships. In the mean while Lord Napier's illness unhappily increased, and at length, notwithstanding the unremitted care of his family and medical attendants, terminated his existence in the course of a few weeks after his arrival at Macao.

His Lordship's successor, Mr. Davis, in writing to the Secretary of State, observed, with reference to his own advice of an appeal to Peking, that "it might be recommended by such reasons as the following:-first, that no fact was better authenticated than the general ignorance in which the local government kept the court in regard to Canton transactions and its treatment of Europeans; secondly, that Chinese principles sanctioned and invited appeals against the distant delegates of the Emperor; thirdly, that a reference of the kind was so successful in 17591 as to occasion the removal of a chief commissioner of customs at Canton, though made by only a subordinate officer of the East India Company. Such an appeal, without previous reference home, was expressly forbidden at the time by the instructions under the sign-manual, and such an appeal has never been made to the present day. It must be made at last, however, in a manner and under circumstances which an earlier adoption might have prevented.

The useless office of master attendant, now become superfluous by the abandonment in England of the scheme for levying duties on our ships in the Canton river, was abolished by the Chief superintendent, and the late master attendant, Captain Elliot of the Royal Navy, was appointed by him to the office of Secretary to the commission. The severe loss experienced in the recent death of Dr. Morrison, the Chinese secretary, (more practically versed in the language than any European,) had been supplied by his son; and the services of Mr. Gutzlaff, as joint interpreter, were now secured by transferring to him the salary which had lately been paid to the master attendant.

Two edicts were in the mean while issued by the Chinese Viceroy, in which the English merchants were called upon to elect a temporary Taepan, or commercial chief, to control the English shipping, and prevent the smuggling at Lintin, where nearly forty vessels were now anchored. They were, besides, directed to write home for a Taepan, who was to be a merchant, and not a king's officer; the object of course being to keep the control of the English in the hands of the Hong mer

1 Chap. ii. p. 29.

chants. No notice whatever was taken of these edicts; as it was clear that the embarrassment which must result to the local government, from the want of some authority to address themselves to, would in time oblige them to recognise the king's commission. This opinion has been completely sanctioned by the event, a direct correspondence with the officers of government having been long since established by Captain Elliot.

When the British trade had continued prosperously for a space of between three and four months, the Chief Superintendent, in his communications with the Secretary of State, took a review of the principal occurrences up to that period, as the best ground of an opinion relative to the measures which our government should adopt. "I am aware," he observed, "that two courses of a very opposite nature might have been taken by me in lieu of the one which I have pursued, and which, considering that a season of unusual commercial activity and an increased amount of tonnage is now drawing quietly to a close with the monsoon, I see no reason to regret. I might, in the first place, have tried the effect of a measure which has not been without its advocates, and which (under very peculiar and favourable circumstances) was successful in 1814; I mean the withdrawal of the ships from the river, and the stoppage of the trade on our part. I do not deny that this might have been productive of considerable embarrassment to the local government for the time; but the ill success of such a course in the season of 1829-30, when the Company's ships were detained for fivemonths to little or no purpose, was a warning which I now do not regret having profited by.

"I might, on the other hand, have adopted the opposite extreme, of an immediate submission to the dictates of the local government, and have proceeded to Canton to place myself under the management of the Hong; but from this I was deterred by the conviction, stated to your Lordship in my despatch of the 11th November, that any adjustment ought to take place as the result of a mutual necessity, and that an unbecoming and premature act of submission an

2 Parliamentary Papers, p. 78.